Fruits of Success

Thursday, 14 June 2012

6 ways to converting Nervousness into Confidence in presentations

Maria Clews and Hugh Alford- coaches for Effective Business Presentations

You may think that you cannot speak publicly because of nervousness but ALL GOOD SPEAKERS ARE NERVOUS.

There will be a touch in the 'scream' in all speakers with nerves

Mari Clews and I have just finished an effective presentations programme for one of the major high street banks but for their Corporate business side. (No names but the bank was founded in 1727 in Edinburgh !)

Maria ran a programme in Manchester and I ran one in City of London. Both of us were impressed by the courage and application of the delegates.

Presentation courses can be stressful for the folk who attend .

Initially they can be quite nervous and apprehensive.

So we draw a scale at the start of the course on flip chart and ask the delegates to gauge their level of confidence and comfort at the start of the programme and mark it on the scale.

Scale of Comfort and Confidence

By the end of our course delegates have shifted more to the right hand of the scale. Of course Maria and I just suggest some tips and techniques along the way - but it is the delegates who make those techniques work for them.

The psot course feedback we got included:-

"Very well delivered.. Enjoyed the variety of styles ie visual, debates stories, analogies etc"

"Excellent - really good quality and very interesting and relevant"

"Very useful feedback on presentations"

"Hugh was great – Clearly knew his topic and shared his knowledge"

"Really enjoyed the two days + found it useful and relevant"

"The two days really worked"

"My confidence has really improved in such a short period of time with easy to pick up tips"

These comments are great for both Maria and I, yet we know if you stop being nervous completely you don’t care about your audience any more –and it’s time to give up!

Nervous tension is not good but nervous excitement is important.

The key is to control those nerves * nervous tension) and make them work for you (nervous excitement).

Traffic light -good advice from actors
- Detail of the poster campaign form RADA
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art -
Campaign on the London Underground ( The 'Tube')

Here are five techniques which Maria and I know can help you just as they did for the groups we worked with this week.

1. Tension should be released first in your lungs:

Replace short panicky breathing with slow, deep breathing - do this through your nose to prevent your throat drying out prior to speaking.

This can be done quite unobtrusively as you are being introduced.

2. When the introductions are over:

   Slow yourself down a bit if you are inclined to rush in clumsily

     a. take your position
   b. clear the lectern and desk if necessary,
   c. arrange your confidence cards/ notes and visual aids
d. generally make yourself comfortable with your space before looking at the audience.

When you're ready to take command, relax your shoulders and feel the tension drop off them - your whole body will feel the benefit of this simple exercise and if your body feels relaxed, then you will too.

Smile ( particualrly with your eyes) at the audience generally, or at individuals you have met beforehand.

If you convey some degree of warmth for them, they are more than likely to return the compliment.

3. When you have their full attention, and only then, you may commence your presentation:

Some individuals find the sound of their own projected voice quite unsettling initially and you should be prepared for this phenomena. It is only off-putting if unexpected.

Again you may encounter a build up of nerves at this point so:

4. Know exactly how you intend to start.

Like a swan look serene above the waterline

5. Commence with your presentation with

a. “glide in introduction/greeting ,” good morning/ afternoon/ evening ladies and gentlemen,
b. introduce yourself,
c. follow up with an attention “Grabber” and the “Billboard” and get quickly into the meat of your presentation.

For ideas on openers to presentations see this link.

6. Have an early visual built into your presentation so that your audience take their eyes off you for a few moments to let you collect yourself.

If you are using PowerPoint slides you can project a slide.

If using a flichart you can draw something and attention moves form you to the flipchart.

If you are going to guide them throuh a page numbered handout the same principle helps take the spot liht off you for few seconds.

Now your nerves are under control enjoy your presentation.

Good Luck from Maria and Hugh ( me)

Saturday, 9 June 2012

Effective use of your Voice in your Business Presentations

What is GOOD VOICE DELIVERY?

No amount of speechmaking brilliance will enable you to make successful business presentations if you have not carefully prepared your presentation.

The content of your presentation should be logical, persuasive and full of relation to your audience to ensure that it holds their attention.

Equipped with such a carefully prepared presentation you can however ensure that your presentation makes the maximum impact if you work hard at delivering it to the maximum of your ability.

Audiences do not expect that your presentation has to be delivered in 'Obamic' tones or that your voice will rival that of the great orators. They will however expect to be able to hear you and to understand clearly the words you have so carefully prepared.

They will also expect you to deliver your presentation as though you really believe in the message you wish to put across.

Here are some basic techniques which you can practise which will help you to meet these requirements of your audience.

The SOUND of your VOICE

Do you know how your voice comes across to your audience?

Most people do not since day to day they we hear their own voice as it reverberates through the bones in their head, whilst others hear it straight from your mouth.

It is for this reason that you may be surprised when you hear your own voice recorded on a video or voicemail message.

When you recover from your initial surprise you will probably find that whilst it may be a little higher or lower than you expect, it is in fact a perfectly acceptable voice to listen to.

Out on video MP1015D Momentum Pictures
includes real speeches by King George VI

Certainly you will be able to improve it but it is only in very rare cases that a persons' voice is such a serious handicap that they need to seek professional help from elocution teachers or speech therapists.

CAN YOU BE HEARD ?

Many more people speak too quietly than speak too loudly in a presentation. If you project your voice insufficiently not only may your message be lost on your audience but it will also convey a lack of confidence on your part.

Practise speaking in a large empty room. Ask a friend or a colleague to stand at the back of the room and tell you whether you can be clearly heard. If necessary keep forcing yourself to raise the volume even though it may seem unnatural to you.

So often delegates on courses tell me that as they raise the volume it seems unnatural to them.

They firmly believe that it seems as though they are shouting. Yet the rest of the delegates always reassure them that that is not the case and that they are only projecting their voice in a way which makes it easy for the audience to hear them.

Is your VOICE Clear ?

Volume is very important but it must be matched by the clarity of the words being spoken. The biggest handicap to clarity of speech is failure to work your mouth fully as the words are projected. (Tongue teeth and lips )

Speak each word clearly and don't allow them to trail off at the end of your sentences.

There will often be people in your audience for whom English is not their first language and for their benefit every word must be as clear as possible. If you work on the assumption that there is at least one such person in every audience you will soon find that the clarity of your speech is greatly increased.

VARIETY

Nothing is more likely to reduce an audience to boredom than a presentation delivered in a monotonous voice.

If you practise changing the tone of your voice you will find that your audiences will respond more positively to your presentations.

Raising the pitch of your voice convey your sense of excitement.

Letting it fall if you want to make a serious point.

Initially you may think that it sounds over-dramatic but your audience will find that it adds to the impact your presentation makes on them.

PACE of your VOICE

Just as a monotonous voice can lull an audience to sleep so can a voice which is one-paced.

There will be passages in your presentations which require you to speed up your delivery: others where you should deliver your words more slowly. You will probably find that as you seek more inflection in your voice you will automatically be introducing changes of pace for the two are very closely linked.

EMPHASIS

Emphasis can be used to stress a particularly important section of your presentation. There will be some words and phrases which it is essential for your audience to appreciate and you will help them to do this if you give added weight to them.

Often you will find in a book that words have been put in italics to make the meaning clearer for the reader. Your audience will not have a script so your voice must do this for them.

PAUSE in your speech.

You will be aware of how much work you are putting in to making your presentation. Remember that your audience will also be working hard as it requires considerable concentration to keep listening throughout a presentation.

Make it easier for them: allow them an occasional pause in the presentation so that they can reflect on what they have heard and prepare themselves for what is to come.

The pause can be used to give extra impact to the sentence being delivered and it is a very effective way of holding the attention of your audience.

No matter how well you have prepared there will be times when things do not go as you have planned. It may be that you have forgotten to turn over a confidence card, or that you have temporarily mislaid a visual aid. It is at such times that you should pause, collect your thoughts and find your place, before resuming your presentation. All too often in such situations the presenter will fill that moment by apologising and telling the audience of the problem. Remember that though that period of uncertainty may seem like an eternity to you, the audience is extremely unlikely to even notice that anything was wrong - unless you tell them!

EMOTION in your voice.

These basic techniques will add greatly to the impact which your presentation makes.

Some presenters do, of course, ignore all these techniques and achieve considerable success. The reason is that they put such enthusiasm and emotion into their delivery that they totally captivate their audiences.

In suggesting that you put emotion into your presentations we are not asking you to tear out your hair or burst into tears.

But if you are telling your audience that the future for your company is exciting, you must sound as though you are excited or there is little likelihood that they will be.
Alternatively if your message is that the future is bleak unless your recommendations are implemented your delivery must convey this sense of gravity.

HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR VOICE

Be aware of your voice and constantly seek to use it to its best advantage. Practise and self-criticism will be invaluable aids in improving your delivery. If, however, you find it difficult to achieve a satisfactory level of volume practise with some breathing exercises. When you are speaking to an audience you will need to use more air from your lungs so that as you project the words through your windpipe and out through your mouth they will carry greater force.

Tongue twisters are an excellent way of increasing the clarity of your speech. It is best to practise the tongue twisters that trip you up rather than just keep to the ones you know and can do easily.

Here is link to a great site on tongue twisters

Look to add more variety by using a greater range of your voice even in everyday conversations.

If you ever read bedtime stories to young children read them in a lively entertaining way which will add both to their enjoyment of the story and to the variety of your delivery.

If there are no kids to hand you can practise at home reading out aloud . Get a copy of Aesop's Fables. These are short tales that read aloud well.

Penguin Classics ISBN 0-140-44649-4 1998 translated by Olivia and Robert Temple.

Do not be afraid to record your presentations on your DVD camera . Read your presentations into the recorder on your smart phone and keep searching for greater impact in your vocal delivery. As you listen to the recordings you will notice how quickly your voice improves.

You may not see yourself as a great speaker. It may even be that you consider yourself to be someone who naturally has an uninteresting voice.

Don't accept that verdict too easily, stretch yourself, practise the techniques and it may be that you surprise yourself by finding that you are capable of delivering your presentations with vigour and variety.

Provided that all the preparation has been done you will be increasing your chances of making successful business presentations.

Related Links

Presentation Skills

Reading:

Fascinating study. covering a wide range of issue associated with the voice. Quite a provocative polemic on the misuse of Mehrabian's data and its underestimation of the role of voice (7%). pages 209-212

The Human Voice - the story of a remarkable talent by Anne Karpf published by Bloomsbury ISBN 0-7475-7649-1 2006

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Interesting read - new age style- insight into how actors work their voices

The Alchemy of the Voice by Stewart Pearce ISBN 0-340-82622-3
2005 Publisher Hodder and Stoughton

Friday, 8 June 2012

Crafty Tips for better PowerPoint Presentations

Simple Crafty PowerPoint Tips for your business presentations

Photo of a poster at Bristol Parkway Rail Station

Although 'death by powerpoint' is a much vaunted expression , it seems it is an 'urban myth' .

Commercial buying committees still favour it. The Buyers' views of Salespeople survey 2012 - shortly to be published - illustrates this.

But whatever the medium , it is HOW the message is used that matters most.

PowerPoint is just the medium not the message in a presentation.

Too many business presenters rely on PowerPoint forgetting that Slides are intended as a visual aid for your audience, they are not best used a a script.

Even if they help us to remember our content they may not remind us of the interesting embellishments to give a presentation some freshness and spontaneity.

Just relying on slides from PowerPoint can also be rather monotonous.

If we want to use PowerPoint in our presentation make sure we are in control of it not it of us!

Most of us in Business only use a minute part of what PowerPoint software provides.

It is like what I imagine would be like driving a Formula 1 Ferrari around the circuit but never getting out of first gear.

There are some excellent books now on PowerPoint but they are quite difficult to navigate around.

I would recommend Cliff Atkinson's " Beyond Bullet Points" ISBN 0-7356-2052-0 published by Microsoft Press. My copy is 2005 but it has probably been updated. Scroll down for link to website.

Even if story boarding is not your thing, these simple tips will break up a 'vanilla' PowerPoint presentation.

Tip 1

One of the most useful presenting aids in a PowerPoint show are the ' B' key for Blank and 'W' for White key.

They enable one not to appear to be shackled to a slide show and allow the presenter to control the presentation flow and flexibility.
For example:
If someone asks a question which you can answer then and there, you can draw the groups attention to your answer and not be distracted by the slide by pressing B or W.

Also by blanking or whitening the screen you can use an additional visual aid e.g. a sample or maybe draw an explanation on a flip chart ( as a supplementary medium) bring variety and change in pace into your presentation.

Tip 2
Additionally if you have a slide number checklist of your presentation by entering the number you can move directly to that slide. This feature is extremely useful if you want to skip some slides to catch up on time or when at question time someone in the audience wishes to ask a question where you can quickly answer their question by going straight to the relevant slide

Tip 3
For further little tricks try the F1 button when in slide show mode and it reveals four useful windows
see below

(PowerPoint Short Cut Codes F1 key box)

Letter / Number Keys

‘N’ Advance to Next slide

‘P’ Return to Previous slide

Number followed by ENTER Go to that slide

‘B’ Blank/unblanks screen

‘W’ Whites/unwhites screen

‘A’ Show/Hide Arrow Pointer

‘S’ Stop/restart automatic show

Esc End slide show

‘E’ Erase drawing on screen

‘H’ Go to Hidden slide

‘T’ Rehearse using New Time

‘O’ Rehearse using Original Time

‘M’ Rehearse –Advance on Mouse click

CONTROL + keys

Ctrl + ‘P’ Change pointer to pen

Ctrl + ‘A’ Change pointer to arrow

Ctrl + ‘E’ Change pointer to Eraser

Ctrl + ‘H’ Hide pointer or button

Ctrl + ‘U’ Automatically show/hide arrow

Right mouse click

Ctrl + ‘S’ All slides dialog

Ctrl ‘T’ View Task bar

Ctrl + M Show /hide ink mark up.

Monday, 4 June 2012

Prince Andrew,Beatrice and Eugenie pay surprise visit to jubilee lunch

Trinity Sunday June 3rd was a special day at All Saints Church, Fulham (ASF) West London.

On this diamond jubilee weekend, Her Majesty's second son, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and his daughters, the princesses Beatrice and Eugenie honoured us with a surprise visit to our Church's Jubilee lunch before joining the River Pageant.
Braving the weather we held the lunch in the Church yard with 20 tables and bunting a plenty.

Prince Andrew,The Duke of York at the foot of the Medieval Tower
of All Saints Church, Fulham in conversation with the Vicar , Canon Joe Hawes
with two members of our congregation..
The display in the background described the works and fundraisng scheme save our towerand bells .

Prince Andrew makes a short speech at the west door of All Saints Church, Fulham beneath the medieval Tower .

Through this west door where the Prince stood- history has been made over hundreds of years where a thousand brides and pallbearers have processed and once sat children with their slates.

Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie talk to the crowds outside All Saints Church, Fulham on Sunday of the Diamond Jubilee 2012

All Saints Church Fulham is on the north bank near Putney bridge.

Putney bridge was a mustering point for the fabulous pageant of 1000 craft that took place in the afternoon.

As the TV and media coverage of the pageant interleaved their relays with the famous painting of Canaletto -1746 - Lord Mayor's Day and previous pageants on the river Thames so I thought I would add here inthis blog post some photos of the boats going under Putney bridge up towards the centre of London in 2012.

Notice in the background the Medieval Tower of All Saints Church which has looked over the Thames since 1440.

The Tower and Bells are in need of a 'little care and attention' - so there is a fundraising campaign underway to raise the £ 407,000 to repair and maintain this icon of the Thames at West London.

The tower is made of Kentish ragstone, which came from Maidstone by barge

Famous each year as a backdrop to the start of the Oxford and Cambridge University boat race at Putney Bridge, the church tower and west door even made a 'brief appearance' in the blockbuster 1976 film "The Omen" starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick. See You tube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVrOm0rQj38 where Father Brennan (played by Patrick Troughton) comes to 'sticky end'

Yet the medieval tower has been a location 'picture opportunity' back in the day.

In the poster for this year's exhibition of the works of the artist Zoffany at the Royal Academy of Arts, the tower appeared in the background of his famous picture of the Sharpe family.

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The principal poster promoting the Zoffany Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts depicts the Sharp Family on their barge the Apollo..
Slavery abolitionist Granville Sharp is wearing green at the bottom centre of the poster
All Saints Church Fulham is depicted to the left ( close up below) Sharp is buried in the Churchyard.

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detail from the picture The Sharpe family by Zoffany
of All Saints Church Fulham

Some photos of the Diamond Jubilee River Pageant on the river Thames with the 600 year old Tower of All Saints Church , Fulham in the background.

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Crowds along the north bank of the Thames at Fulham and
over Putney Bridge watching the river pageant
of the Diamond Jubilee 2012 on its way up the river Thames to central London

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Part of the flotilla of Commonwealth Countries by the Sea Scouts
at the River Pageant Diamond Jubilee 2012 approaching Putney Bridge
with All Saints Church Fulham in the background

A boat dressed overall on its way to the River Pageant 2012. crowds
on the embankment All Saints Church Tower, Fulham in the background

If you would like to contribute to the All Saints Tower and Bells Restoration Appeal details can be found

info@allsaints-fulham.org.ukand www.alsaints-fulham.org.uk

All Saints Restoration Appeal Registered charity number 1130273

(A selling connection if somewhat tenuous - since this blog is primarily about Selling-
Up to July 2011 Prince Andrew was the Special Representative for International Trade and Investment a member of the Royal Family who represented the Sovereign for UK Trade and Investment which reports jointly to the Foreign Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills –his role involved representing the United Kingdom at numerous trade fairs and conferences the world over, such as the Davos World Economic Forum.)